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The Decline and Fall of IBM

End of an American Icon?

By:
Robert Cringely

Narrated by:
Robert Cringely

Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
44

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
35

Story

4 out of 5 stars
35

IBM is in serious trouble. Big Blue, as the company is known, tends to rely for its success on magical thinking but that magic ran out a long time ago. The company got in trouble back in the 1990s and had to hire for the first time an outside CEO, Lou Gerstner, to save the day. Gerstner pushed IBM into services with spectacular results but this hurt the company, too. As services have became commoditized IBM could only compete by offshoring the work and quality suffered.